Should Congress go along with President Obama's request that it spend $50 billion on transportation? He's calling it a down payment on the long-delayed six-year transportation authorization bill that has been mired in discussions on Capital Hill for months, and says it will create thousands of jobs and shore up our sagging infrastructure.

On Monday, a passel of mayors (including San Antonio's, as my colleague Melanie Mason notes) joined Obama and a couple of governors and two former U.S. transportation secretaries to urge Congress to write the check.

But one governor at least, Texas's Rick Perry, thinks the spending would be a mistake, despite the fact that his state faces a shortfall of up to 21 billion next year, and local transportation advocates -- not to mention state department of transportation leaders -- have been crying out for more money for roads, bridges and transit.

Perry told The News through a spokeswoman Monday that he wants Congress to reject the president's proposal. Here's why:

"For years Washington has shortchanged Texas taxpayers, sending back only 85 cents of every dollar in motor fuels taxes that Texas sends to Washington, of which only 70 cents may be used specifically for highway construction and maintenance.

"Gov. Perry believes that instead of following their instinct to increase spending, as they did with the existing stimulus bill and consequently deepening our national debt, Washington ought to focus on sending more of our tax dollars back to Texas and allow states to decide the most efficient way to address our transportation infrastructure needs. Or for that matter, let Texans keep more of their money in the first place.

"Texas continues to lead the nation in job creation as a result of our low taxes, predictable regulatory system, fair legal system and educated workforce.

"Gov. Perry will continue to call on Washington to lower taxes and to prioritize and reduce government spending to spur private sector job growth and strengthen our nation's economy."

A spokeswoman for former Houston mayor Bill White, Perry's Democratic opponent in November said she'd need more time to study the president's proposal, but said White shares Perry's concerns about adding to the national deficit. If the government did spend another $50 billion on highways, she said White would insist that regional planning agencies get the top say about which projects should be funded.

Besides, said Katy Bacon, after a decade of leadership under appointments made by Perry, TxDOT itself is "completely broken" and has failed to do quality long-term planning. White believes it would be better to reform the agency first, before the federal government throws a bunch of money its way.

For their part, Perry's complaints about Texas being shortchanged in federal highway dollars are old ones, and some argue the state does better than Perry's numbers would suggest, depending on how the funds are calculated.

But no matter how it is divided, $50 billion would buy a lot of roads and other projects, as would any share Texas would likely get. Last year's recovery act slated about $48 billion toward similar infrastructure and Texas nabbed about $2.3 billion of those funds. That has funded hundreds of projects in Texas, most of which are still underway.

Chris Lippincott of the Texas Department of Transportation said that as of August, Texas had received $2.2 billion for highway projects, another $51 million for transit work, and about $18 million for aviation projects. For the highway work alone, the state had awarded 594 contracts totaling about $2.1 billion, and had so far actually spent about $769 million. (September numbers are due out this week.)

Still, while it continues to say Texas and America needs to spend more on roads, TxDOT on Monday appeared lukewarm on the prospect of Congress showering the states with another big round of borrowed transportation dollars. Lippincott said the president's plan is short on details of who would get what, but it appears most of the money would be awarded through discretionary grants, rather than through formula funding.

"As your newspaper has reported, we don't always fare well when the projects get picked in D.C.," Lippincott said. "We are not in a position to comment on the proposal until the details are sorted out. We're always happy to see the administration address infrastructure matters, but our hope is that we can start talking about a multi-year authorization bill that creates a goal-oriented, problem-solving surface transportation program."

In other words, he suggested that the $50 billion would be nice, if it's distributed fairly. But even better would be if Congress got down to work and passed a six-year bill that has been on hold since last year.

He's not alone in suggesting that.

Robert Puentes, a senior fellow and transportation scholar at the Brookings Institution's metropolitan policy center, said much the same thing when he reviewed Obama's call to spend the $50 billion when he first proposed it, over Labor Day weekend. "We need to hear more specifics about what the administration's priorities are for the long term reauthorization of the transportation law," Puentes wrote. There is no shortage of proposals, including a draft bill out of the House, three national commissions, and a host of others. The "bullet points" presented in Milwaukee represent a small first step."

He also added this: "Transportation policy in the U.S. is not stalled due to a lack of good ideas. It is stalled due to a lack of funding, or, more accurately, for a lack of interest in raising taxes to generate the funding."

And while he likely wouldn't embrace this little truth, that may in fact be exactly where Gov. Perry finds common ground with President Obama. Indeed just as Perry was credited with helping kill the local option transportation tax proposal in 2009, it has been Obama and his Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, who have pushed back against calls by some Democrats in Congress for an ambitious -- and very expensive -- six-year plan.

LaHood has since said, and told me again in Houston this year, that a gasoline tax increase or similar measure is simply off the table in the current economic climate. (Perry, like White, is against a state gas tax increase, too.)

Another common approach between Obama and Perry is this: Neither support higher gas taxes, but both have insisted that roads must be built somehow. For years, Perry pushed toll roads and privatization as a way to keep the lane miles coming, especially in areas like Dallas. Obama wants to do the same thing, but he's proposing borrowing the money now as a form of deficit spending aimed at kick-starting the economy. The two approaches have this in common: Both put asphalt on the ground now, and leave it to our children to pay the construction bills.

Obama's plan is likely to be rehashed a dozen times between now and January, when Obama hopes Congress will begin studying it seriously (according to Bloomberg News.

Of course, by January, the off-year elections will have played out with who knows what unforeseen results.

Here in Texas the Legislature by then will be wrangling over redistricting and how to confront a shortfall of up to $21 billion, and it seems certain that transportation advocates seeking more state funding will lawmakers hard to reach.